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CTAnton

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...opening the oven door this morning to see perfectly gelled Aleppo soap....laurel berry oil at 27% and the rest olive...I brought the oven up to 170F for 15 minutes and then let it cool before I put the silicone molds in...no silicone rash !
 
I thought it being all liquid oil and 33% lye concentration will take a few days to unmold. Clearly I'm wrong. Thanks for the reply. :p
 
for the sake of accuracy I added sodium citrate to the batch as well...forgot about that addition earlier...
No one was more surprised than yours truly...I will say this in reference to a lower temperature oven to prevent "silicone rash"...the mold on the top shelf got just a tiny amount of silicone rash while the silicone mold on the shelf beneath it didn't get any...I'm wondering if the topmost shelf was just a tad warmer than the lower...I want to thank penelopejane for bringing this topic up a short time ago...
 
so I'm busy cleaning up my soap cache ahead of my busy horticultural season. Awhile back I asked for help developing alternative high percentage tallow soap. What I was making just didn't cut it for lather; a nice long lasting gentle bar but.....it needed a certain je ne sais quoi.
So there's a batch of the afore mentioned soap needing a bit of clean up around the edges. The only difference was I did the 5/95% split of KOH/NaOH. As DeeAnna said yes..that measly 5% can make a big difference.
There was one scrap of this batch of decent size and while it was a little young for me at 5 weeks of age off it went to the bathroom sink. The difference is day and night. YOWSA!!I am so hooked on this !!!! Needless to say, without a bath pouf or any other extraneous product I got my lather!!
 
for the sake of accuracy I added sodium citrate to the batch as well...forgot about that addition earlier...
No one was more surprised than yours truly...I will say this in reference to a lower temperature oven to prevent "silicone rash"...the mold on the top shelf got just a tiny amount of silicone rash while the silicone mold on the shelf beneath it didn't get any...I'm wondering if the topmost shelf was just a tad warmer than the lower...I want to thank penelopejane for bringing this topic up a short time ago...

Be careful because people have reported that once a silicone mold gets heated to too high a temperature all subsequent batches show the "silicone rash". At 150* F I would have thought you could turn the oven off as soon as you put the mold in the oven.
 
actually i preheat the oven at the beginning of my soaping process...theres a large pizza stone I have at the bottom of the oven that holds some heat...about the time I'm adding the lye solution to the oils I turn the oven off. I'm soaping around 100F these days and I check the temperature of the oven before the soap goes in.I aim for around 110F. If it's particularly cold in the house I'll fire up the oven an hour or so later and have the thermometer start climbing above the 100 degree minimum registered temperature and then shut it off...
 
so I'm busy cleaning up my soap cache ahead of my busy horticultural season. Awhile back I asked for help developing alternative high percentage tallow soap. What I was making just didn't cut it for lather; a nice long lasting gentle bar but.....it needed a certain je ne sais quoi.
So there's a batch of the afore mentioned soap needing a bit of clean up around the edges. The only difference was I did the 5/95% split of KOH/NaOH. As DeeAnna said yes..that measly 5% can make a big difference.
There was one scrap of this batch of decent size and while it was a little young for me at 5 weeks of age off it went to the bathroom sink. The difference is day and night. YOWSA!!I am so hooked on this !!!! Needless to say, without a bath pouf or any other extraneous product I got my lather!!
Hi, can you send the link for that recipe please? I have started adding castor oil to my soaps for a better lather and it is so much better but would love to know other ways too.
 
20% Tallow
35% Lard
15% Coconut
10% Palm Kernel Flakes
15%Rice Bran Oil
5% Castor
there's my percentages.....i used soapee.com calculator for the 5/95% split with the lyes...
 
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